The Essay

The novel opens with a prologue set years after the main story. Jimmy Lee Hickam, now a journalist at the Washington Daily Herald, reveals during a reporting trip through Vinton County, Ohio, that he grew up nearby, on Red Dog Road. His editor presses him to tell his story and connects him with a publisher. Jimmy Lee credits his success to someone who believed in him and showed him a path he could never have found alone.

The narrative moves to Jimmy Lee's childhood. Red Dog Road is a dead-end gravel lane named for a massive gob pile, a mountain of sulfur-laced red ash left by the defunct Hudson Mining Company that has poisoned the local creek and left the landscape barren. Its residents are called "doggers," a term used with open contempt. From his first day of school, Jimmy Lee is shunned by classmates warned to keep their distance from the Hickams, a family synonymous with crime. His grandfather was a moonshiner arrested in a dramatic raid. His father, Nick, is a belligerent man who drinks heavily and works at a sawmill. His oldest brother, Edgel, is serving nine years in the Mansfield State Reformatory for burglary and arson. His middle brother, Virgil, works as a carnival laborer. Jimmy Lee's mother, Mildred, known as Sis, is a hardworking waitress who acknowledges that marriage to Nick is difficult but stays because he holds a steady job.

Despite his intelligence and a secret love of reading, Jimmy Lee sees no point in trying academically. Everything changes during his sophomore year when Coach Kyle Battershell, a former star quarterback at Ohio University who has taken over East Vinton's struggling football program, notices Jimmy Lee's speed and invites him to try out. Football gives Jimmy Lee his first experience of acceptance and accomplishment. By junior year he earns all-league and all-district honors, and Coach raises the possibility of a college scholarship.

Jimmy Lee nearly fails junior English, however, because an embarrassing daily distraction in Miss Amanda Singletary's first-period class makes concentration impossible. She assigns extra credit, and he submits a book report she calls one of the best she has ever read. She passes him with a D, warning it is his last break.

When senior year begins, Jimmy Lee is elected defensive captain. Miss Singletary announces an essay competition sponsored by the Alpha & Omega Literary Society. The topic is "A place and time that I wish I could revisit." Jimmy Lee immediately thinks of a fishing trip with his Uncle Boots, his mother's brother-in-law, a kind retired Army man who took nine-year-old Jimmy Lee canoeing on the Scioto River and taught him that a man need not yell to be heard. Uncle Boots died the following spring in a tractor accident. At an assembly, Jimmy Lee is announced as the first-place winner. Miss Singletary is the only teacher to stand and applaud. That evening, Edgel, released early from prison due to overcrowding, inspects the gold medal and tells Jimmy Lee it is "a ticket" off Red Dog Road.

The victory triggers backlash. Mrs. Gloria Johanessen, the freshman-sophomore English teacher whose daughter Catherine finished second, enlists the principal to challenge Jimmy Lee's authorship, citing his poor junior English grades as evidence. Miss Singletary storms in, defends Jimmy Lee, and threatens to go to the superintendent and the newspapers. She privately asks him to confirm the essay is his own work. He does, and she takes him at his word, the first authority figure ever to do so.

Miss Singletary begins intensive daily tutoring for the countywide competition, addressing Jimmy Lee's personal hygiene with painful directness and providing toiletries and new clothes. On a Saturday trip to Athens, Coach Battershell and Miss Singletary take Jimmy Lee to buy proper clothes and visit the Ohio University campus. Coach shares his own story: His father, a famous sheriff, was indicted for corruption and died by suicide before Kyle left for college. He tells Jimmy Lee that leaving Vinton County means starting fresh.

Nick discovers Jimmy Lee's hidden savings and steals the money. When Jimmy Lee confronts him, Nick knees him in the groin. Edgel recovers half the cash. Nick storms into Miss Singletary's classroom demanding she stop encouraging Jimmy Lee, but she dresses him down and he leaves defeated. When Nick asks the sawmill owner, Mr. Morgan, for his old job back, Morgan has him thrown off the property. In a drunken rage, Nick beats his wife, announces he is leaving for Florida to join Virgil, and hitchhikes south. It is the last time Edgel sees him alive.

Days later, the Morgan Lumber Company burns to the ground. Deputies arrest Edgel on suspicion of arson because of his record. On Senior Night before the conference championship, Jimmy Lee's mother, consumed with worry over Edgel's arrest, forgets to attend. Miss Singletary steps in, pinning a white mum to her coat and walking Jimmy Lee onto the field. East Vinton's football team, the Elks, wins 24-0 for their first conference title in decades. The next morning, Jimmy Lee competes in the county essay competition, writing about his heroine: Miss Singletary. He wins first place and a $1,000 scholarship. Deputies verify Edgel's alibi through receipts and witnesses, and he is released. He visits Mr. Morgan to declare his innocence and is offered a job clearing debris from the burned mill.

Mrs. Johanessen retaliates by accusing Miss Singletary of an improper relationship with Jimmy Lee. Edgel devises a counterstrike: a letter to the county prosecutor alleging that Mrs. Johanessen sexually assaulted him when he was her 16-year-old student, an encounter Jimmy Lee inadvertently witnessed as a small child. Jimmy Lee delivers the letter, warning that copies will be mailed to newspapers and school officials if Miss Singletary is suspended. Mrs. Johanessen retracts her accusation.

Jimmy Lee's mother, having heard nothing from Nick for months, divorces him, immediately marries a truck driver named John "Cyclops" Phillips, and deeds the house to her sons. At a school ceremony, Jimmy Lee signs a football scholarship to Ohio Methodist University, a Division II school Coach Battershell selected for its strong journalism department. Edgel proposes selling the house to cover costs the scholarship does not. When Jimmy Lee asks what will happen when their father returns, Edgel produces a scorched, melted wristwatch he found in the sawmill's subbasement alongside Nick's remains. Nick never left Vinton County. His departure is a ruse: He breaks into the sawmill to burn it down as revenge against Mr. Morgan but is killed when he ignites propane gas that has settled where he stands.

Edgel then reveals the deepest betrayal: Nick committed all the burglaries and arsons for which Edgel served nine years. Nick used Edgel's car to commit the crimes, and when evidence was found in the impounded vehicle, Edgel took the fall after his parents told him that if Nick confessed, both would go to prison. Their mother knew the truth all along. Edgel has quietly mixed his father's remains into a load of ash and disposed of them. He walks with Jimmy Lee to a strip-mining pond and throws the melted watch into the water. Jimmy Lee says goodbye to Nick Hickam. Edgel says good riddance.

On the morning Jimmy Lee leaves for college, he stops at Miss Singletary's house to thank her. She deflects credit, insisting she was merely his "blocking back" who cleared a path for him to carry the ball. Edgel drives Jimmy Lee to campus. They pull off Red Dog Road and head into the morning sun, leaving the dust to settle behind them.